


Two Colors (Not the Full Spectrum)

by butterfly_wings



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study-ish, mentioned Kyousuke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23955046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterfly_wings/pseuds/butterfly_wings
Summary: Sayaka had saved Kyouko, once. Now it's her turn to save Sayaka.
Relationships: Miki Sayaka/Sakura Kyouko
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	Two Colors (Not the Full Spectrum)

**Author's Note:**

> russian translation by Stasey_Tasey [here!](https://ficbook.net/readfic/9433642)

The stained glass glows behind her as the sun begins its dramatic descent, and Kyouko feels her lungs burn.

Sayaka slams the door on her way out.

Miki Sayaka’s stubborn determination to uphold justice would be the death of her—that much was obvious. “I’m fighting to protect people from getting hurt.” What nonsense.

“It’s magical girls like you that I cannot stand.” Like, seriously? Sayaka was out of her mind. Kyouko knew what happened if you used your wish for others. It didn’t end well.

There was no point in “saving humanity” or whatever noble nonsense Sayaka believed in—humans were fucked up, and becoming a magical girl in order to “save” them was pointless. Humans didn’t need saving. Only you needed saving.

She sighs, staring up at the hospital that Sayaka had once spent so much of her time at, worrying over Kyousuke. Fucking Kyousuke. He had no idea what Sayaka had done for him.

Sayaka’s corpse, falling on the pavement as her soul gem was carried away. All that—for a boy.

For a _boy_.

Kyouko can barely fathom it. Kyousuke isn’t even interesting.

Well. It’s not like she was any better, was she? Kyouko takes a bite out of her apple, relishing the satisfying crunch beneath her teeth.

Where was Sayaka, anyways? Kyouko wanted to talk to her. Still does, although there’s doubt swirling in her gut now.

Another bite. Sayaka was good. So endearingly, ceaselessly good. It wasn’t fair. Chomp. Her unerring belief in justice. Chomp. Look what it had gotten her—Sayaka—in the end. Chomp. A walking corpse, her soul attached to a glowing blue gem.

She finishes her apple, and without thinking, runs.

Before she knows it, she’s outside Sayaka’s house. Her chest heaves from exertion and she leans over to catch her breath.

Hey, she thinks. Come outside. I want to talk.

She stands there for a few moments, just catching her breath and thinking. She wonders if Sayaka will even come out.

To her surprise, Sayaka does.

“Hey,” she says to Sayaka. Something strikes Kyouko as off about her—the look in her eyes, maybe. They’re blue and bright as they should be but yet somehow flat and dead.

“I want to show you something,” she tells Sayaka. Sayaka only nods, and Kyouko leads her down, down, down, cutting through the city and its steady orange and yellow daylight. They pass under trees, light turning soft and green around them. Eventually, they make it to the abandoned church, dark and imposing in front of them.

Sayaka doesn’t even question why Kyouko is leading her here. That’s concerning, but Kyouko finds that she isn’t ready to answer those questions anyways.

In some strange way, she is grateful for Sayaka’s uncharacteristic silence.

Kyouko places her hand on the heavy wooden door. It’s been…years. Years. Years since she last stepped foot in this place. After…everything.

Sayaka is still silent behind her.

Kyouko takes a breath, steels her resolve. This is what she came to do.

She just hopes that she can reach Sayaka before it’s too late.

She shoves open the door and strides up to the altar, ignoring the tension in her gut. Dust stirs around her feet, but she ignores that too. She has a mission, and she intends to see it through.

It just…needs to work. It has to work.

“Why did you bring me here?” Sayaka asks, voice cool, steady, not angry but not pleased.

“To talk. Want an apple?” Kyouko asks, tossing her one. Sayaka catches it in a fluid motion.

“No,” she says, and throws it on the ground.

All Kyouko sees is red. Her little sister, whispering, “Onee-chan, I’m still hungry.” The growling of her stomach. The hollowness in her belly that still, despite everything, never truly seemed to go away. The gleam of the apple’s red skin as it falls to the floor.

She grabs Sayaka’s collar and raises her up. “Don’t waste food in front of me.”

Blue, blue, blue. Wide but calm, patient, curious, even. Sayaka doesn’t even seem afraid.

What is she doing? She releases Sayaka, bends down, picks up the apple. The apple itself is fine, maybe just slightly bruised. She moves back to the center of the altar, just like her father did.

Chomp. The apple is sweet, crunchy, delicious. Just as it should be.

“Once upon a time, there was a preacher,” Kyouko begins. “He saw all the problems in the world, and he knew how to fix them.”

In her head, she sees her father, standing at the altar, gazing down at his congregation. “You must always be good,” he told her.

She shakes off her father’s ghost. “But his teachings went against the church. The people…they didn’t like that. They began leaving, fearing he was crazy.” Empty pews. But her audience is Sayaka, not the world. Empty pews are fine. Sayaka is there. She’s not moving. Her eyes…they’re intently focused on Kyouko.

“Eventually, he was ex-communicated. They stripped him of his authority. He continued to preach, but no one would listen.”

That stupid letter…she remembers the way her father had stared blankly at it. Thrown it on their dining table and locked himself in his room.

“So I made a contract with Kyuubey. To ensure that people would listen to him. And we saved the world together! Him through his preaching, and me in the shadows, fighting evil.” She shakes her head. “And our lives were good. But somehow…somehow, he found out.”

Her cheek still stings, sometimes, from the ghostly weight of that slap that her father had given her when he found out. “Witchcraft!” He had shouted, and a young Kyouko stumbles backwards.

“He was distraught to find that his congregation was fake. Accused me of being a witch. Eventually, he went mad. He killed his family and himself. Before he died, he even set the house on the fire. I came back to a house in flames and a dead family.”

The heat of the flames as she stared at her house, gaping, struggling to find words that never came. Orange scorching her vision, searing her eyes as she felt her heart drop.

How at some point her voice unlocked and she screamed for her family, but they never came out.

_Sorry, kid. But your family is dead. Lucky you weren’t home, right?_

“After that, well. I swore to never help another person again. People are selfish, Sayaka. I wasted my wish on my father, and…look how that turned out. So this might be my lot in life, but now I’m going to focus on myself.”

She looks at Sayaka, feeling raw, numb, vulnerable, exposed. “I guess…the point is, you don’t really ever know what others want. So why should you care about them?”

Sayaka is quiet, taking in the words. Kyouko’s gaze falls to the colored light on the dust-covered floor. Reds, oranges, yellows, greens. Purples, even. The stained glass really is beautiful. Kyouko always did love this place.

She looks up, and sees…blue.

Sayaka clears her throat, and Kyouko hates how she flinches oh-so-slightly. But it’s the first sound Sayaka has even made after rejecting the apple.

“That may be the path you chose, but I can’t agree,” Sayaka declares. “I became a magical girl for the sake of others, and I’m not going to abandon my morals because I’m technically dead.” She looks at Kyouko: cold, stern, resolute.

What happened to the cheerful, hopelessly optimistic Sayaka? Kyouko…

Kyouko misses her.

This Sayaka looks…looks ready to die.

“Where did you get those apples?” Sayaka asks, landing the finishing blow, the coup de grace. Kyouko freezes.

“As I thought.” Sayaka smiles, still sad and cold and ready to die. “I don’t eat stolen food, sorry.”

And just like that, Sayaka—blue, quiet, cold, dead, alive, musical Sayaka—turns away, and walks back through the empty church, slamming the door on her way out. The sound rings hollow and loud in Kyouko’s ears.

The stained glass behind her is awash with light, casting a swirling rainbow of colors around her feet. In the past, Kyouko had loved this rainbow.

Now though, Kyouko slams her fist on the pulpit. It lands on a spot of soft blue light.

“Damn it, Sayaka!” She shouts, before taking another angry bite of her apple.

She had just wanted to bring that light to Sayaka. Give Sayaka her light back.

Because after every rain storm, there’s a rainbow.

Sayaka just needs to push through her storm. There will be a rainbow. There has to be.

Chomp.

There has to be. There was one for her, after all.

Because Sayaka reminded Kyouko why she had become a magical girl. She had reached out to Kyouko, unintentionally perhaps, but with enough resolve to remind Kyouko of…well, everything.

Now it’s her turn to reach out and remind Sayaka of the same thing.

She chomps on her apple, and ignores the tears running down her face.

It’s just—they become the very thing they were trying to fight?

If Sayaka and her upstanding sense of justice had done anything, it had reminded Kyouko that once upon a time, she too had believed in fairy tales and happy endings.

She needs a miracle. No, scratch that, _Sayaka_ needs a miracle.

And so she will bring Sayaka a miracle.

An idea begins to form in her mind.

In fairy tales, love solves everything. The love she had for her father had inspired her to become a magical girl, to use her wish to save her family. It’s always love.

Kyousuke would be ideal, but…he doesn’t know about magical girls. He can’t even sense the grasping despair of a witch; see the intricacies in a witch’s grief. Rumor has it that he’s going out with someone else, anyways.

It will have to be Madoka, then. The best friend, the one who was always there for Sayaka no matter what. A different kind of love, of course, but isn’t that the beauty of this? There’s so many different types of love. Friendship is just as valuable. Madoka can see the witches; she knows about magical girls; she is just as desperate as Kyouko herself to get Sayaka back.

She reaches out to Madoka, who all too willingly comes running to her.

“You want to save Sayaka, right?” Kyouko asks.

“Of course.”

“Then I want to try reaching out to her.”

Madoka nods, resolve growing in those soft pink eyes of hers. What a pair Madoka and Sayaka made.

“Do you know if it’ll work?” She asks, and Kyouko sighs.

“No one knows how to purify a witch. We’ll be the first. But that’s why we have to try.” Kyouko tosses her soul gem up. It’s glowing red, red, red, the opposite to Sayaka’s blue. “Will you come with me?”

“Yes.” There’s no hesitation in Madoka’s voice. Maybe she and Sayaka had more similarities than Kyouko had expected.

Kyouko catches her soul, and with it, her stray thoughts. Funny how her life is now tied to what is essentially a shiny rock. She wonders what would happen if she dropped it.

“Let’s go,” Kyouko says, recalling the task at hand, and offers Madoka a smile. Madoka returns it with one of her own.

They begin, walking around the city, following Kyouko’s soul gem in hopes of a trace of Sayaka, or the witch Octavia.

Her gem flashes, and Kyouko grins while Madoka gasps.

A signal. They found it.

Or rather, they found _her._

“Ready?” Kyouko asks.

Madoka nods.

They step inside.

Octavia is quiet, at first. There’s nothing but mirrors and silence and the echo of their footsteps. Such a weird place to think of Sayaka being in.

Or is it a reflection of Sayaka?

Kyouko thinks that she’s going to have a hard time fighting any other witches after this.

“Kyouko?” Madoka says, her voice timid. “I was wondering…does this feel familiar?”

Kyouko shrugs. “It’s different from every other witch I’ve fought,” she offers. She’s not sure what else to say.

“Of course,” Madoka says, and whatever she’s thinking, she doesn’t get the chance to say anything else, because Octavia—no, Sayaka, it’s Sayaka—senses them, and greets them.

They run, Kyouko in the lead, Madoka following close behind her. Kyouko doesn’t say anything, just wields her spear and chain and prays that this will be enough.

“Now, Madoka!” She shouts when they reach Octavia. She puts up a barrier between her and Madoka, hoping that Madoka will be safe. “It’s got to work!”

“Sayaka!” Madoka calls. Kyouko assumes she says something else, but she tunes it out. She has a mission, an obligation to Sayaka.

It’s what Sayaka deserves.

Octavia is relentless.

Kyouko’s arms burn as she swings her lance. Sayaka never did know when to give up, and Kyouko kind of loves that.

But she had nearly beat Sayaka once, before Homura had intervened. She’s sure she can beat her again, even if Sayaka is now a witch.

The boundary between her and Madoka shatters, and Kyouko is thrown back violently. She stands up, coughing, and spies Homura standing there, holding Madoka.

Fuck.

Of course it didn’t work. No one knows how to purify a witch, after all.

“Take Madoka out of here!” She shouts to Homura, creating a boundary between her and Madoka, trapping Sayaka in here with her. It doesn’t matter how Homura found them; it’s fortunate that she even came. “I’ll be fine!”

The words sound like a lie. She knows she won’t leave this place alive.

Heck, Homura knows she won’t.

But Homura nods anyways, her face not truly impassive. She seems sad but accepting, Kyouko thinks. Almost as if she had expected this.

“Good luck, Kyouko-san,” Homura tells her, and then with a toss of her hair, leaves.

Kyouko turns back to Octavia, the great music witch. The despair of a girl who could have been something.

She’s out of ideas.

So she does what she knows best.

“Oh, Sayaka,” she says. “No one chose you, did they?” She kneels, falling back into prayer, into the one thing she had sworn not to do all those years ago. “But…I chose you, Sayaka. You’re okay.”

Somehow, she always found herself praying when she was most uncertain.

“You’re so good,” she cries, reaching out to Octavia. Within the witch, she feels a stirring of something, some small flickering of hope and warmth amidst the crushing despair. “Sayaka, you’re so, so good. So selfless.”

In her mind’s eye, she sees the rainbow lights dancing across the alter of her father’s church, crossing over Sayaka’s eyes, coloring Sayaka’s skin in beautiful ribbons of rainbow. Sayaka, Sayaka. It’s always Sayaka.

“Sayaka,” she whispers. “I’m still here.”

This is when Kyouko accepts that she is going to die—and she won’t turn into a witch, some small kindness—but she’ll take Sayaka with her.

Small mercies, huh.

She reaches out once more—not with her body, but with her soul.

Blue, blue, blue. That’s always been Sayaka’s color, but here, it envelops Kyouko in a way that it hadn’t.

“Kyouko?” Sayaka asks. “What…how did you find me?”

“You gave me hope when I had forgotten it,” Kyouko replies, wiping away Sayaka’s tears. “It was only fair that I do the same to you.”

She presses a kiss to Sayaka’s forehead. “It’s going to be okay, Sayaka,” she murmurs, and she feels Sayaka settling into her arms.

“Tell me something nice,” Sayaka whispers.

Kyouko smiles sadly. “The rainbows in my father’s church…from the stained glass…I always thought it was beautiful.”

“We can sit there, then,” Sayaka replies, a tiny smile dancing on her face. “Let’s go.”

That’s the last image Kyouko sees—Sayaka, in her arms, the stone of the alter underneath her legs, and rainbow lights dancing across the two of them.

In another world, Kyouko thinks, they get their happy ending. It would go like this: Kyouko can’t stand Sayaka’s goody-two shoes nature; Sayaka can’t stand Kyouko’s lackadaisical attitude. They clash, they fight, they somehow expose their vulnerabilities to each other, Kyouko begins to trust, Sayaka worries less about right and wrong. They would kiss here, Kyouko thinks, surrounded by the rainbow lights from abandoned stained glass and dust at their feet. A happy ending.

But in this world, they don’t get that.

Blue and red are only two colors of the rainbow, and that’s what she gets in this world. Two colors, not the full spectrum.

A taste of what could have been, cruelly ripped away from her by grief and despair.

**Author's Note:**

> re-watched madoka magica during quarantine and decided to write a painful oneshot :) this hurt me 
> 
> but i love love LOVE kyouko (she's for sure my fave!) so i had to write a little something for her and sayaka 
> 
> thank you for reading! leave a like or a kudos if you enjoyed it~~~


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